Of pegged construction, each with a curved, shaped top rail continuing to form the outswept flattened scrolling arms supported by three turned balusters, interspersed with two vase-shaped splats above a solid seat, the front cabriole shaped leg with a carved shell and a bellflower to the knee and terminating in a claw and ball foot, the three cylindrical legs ending in pad feet, tied with a baluster-turned X-frame stretcher.

The form of this chair which originated in Europe is often referred to as a corner chair. However, this is a misnomer as rather than the design allowing the chair to be placed in the corner of a room, the central front leg and the positioning of the arm supports were designed to minimise obstruction for the sitter to seat themselves at a desk or table for writing or playing cards.

This Chinese pair is based on such an English prototype. Aspects of the design such as the pegged construction and the slightly exaggerated, higher claw and ball foot mark it out as Chinese when compared with English designs. The X-form stretcher works to support the heavy weight of the dense wood. A pair of chairs of the same design is held in the collection of the Peabody Essex Museum and another chair was sold from the Richard Milhender Collection of Export Furniture at Bonhams in 2022.

The first record of Chinese chairs being exported to England dates from 1726 when the East India Company brought '24 Chairs of rosewood inlaid with mother of pearl' valued at £12. During the mid-18th century, China's export trade was subject to stringent regulations, allowing commerce exclusively with a select number of European nations only through the ports of Canton and Shanghai. As Carl L. Crossman explains in ‘The Decorative Arts of the China Trade: Paintings, furnishings and exotic curiosities’, such furniture may have been made to special order, perhaps for a member of the British East India Company posted in China or on Macao, another company outpost.’

Adam Bowett discusses the production of Chinese Export chairs which were made to English designs in ‘Early Georgian Furniture 1715-1740’ (Antique Collectors Club, 2009), p.47-50. He comments that, from the 1720s, the East India trade began importing ‘rosewood’ furniture made to English patterns. However, ‘[t]he precise identity of the ‘rosewood’ employed in such furniture has been the subject of much connoisseurial and botanical debate…, but the majority appears to have been made from what is now called padouk’ (ibid, p.47).

This
chair is illustrated in Kee Il Choi's seminal work, The China Trade:
Romance and Reality, published alongside the
exhibition held at the De Cordova Museum, Lincoln, Massachusetts in
collaboration with The Museum of the American China Trade, Milton,
Massachusetts. A diagram and footnote are included on the interesting joint
between the back uprights and the seat which are joined by an inter-locking
pegged splice joint reinforced with iron ties. The inner corners of the chair
are secured with angle blocks and the inner front corners are fitted with
curved wooden braces. The elaborate style of joint is characteristically
Chinese and Choi makes note of the related line drawings in Gustave Ecke's, Chinese Domestic
Furniture, Rutland, Vermont & Tokyo,
1962, p. 154, no's 22 a & b.

Also
of note is a rare zitan George III style corner armchair sold at Sotheby's, New
York, 18 January 1996, lot 243. If the wood identification is correct, the
chair demonstrates that unusual and valuable woods, usually the preserve of the
imperial workshops, were used for items for export to the West.

A
George II, English prototype of similar form, with double-splat backs dividing
turned spindles and shell-craved seat rail, was sold at Bonhams, London, Fine
English Furniture, 21 November 2012, lot 40. This chair appears to be related
to others which bearing the label of the renowned cabinet maker Giles Grendey
(1693-1780). An example is illustrated in Christopher Gilbert, Pictorial Dictionary
of Marked London Furniture 1700-1840,
Leeds, 1996, p. 242, pl. 434.